Using Google analytics? Make sure all your pages are tagged. Tools like GAChecker make it easy.

Make sure your site returns the right response codes. If it doesn’t, ask your developer to fix it. If they say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter…” my recommendation used to be to slap them in the face and tell them I told you to, but it’ll just get you in trouble. Instead, I’ll do the verbal equivalent for you if you cover travel expenses and put me up in a nice hotel. That’s with an “h,” not an “m.”

Buy PPC ads for your brand keywords. It’s cheap. It protects you from reprobates like me who buy ads for your brand keyword that say my client’s products are better than yours.

Make sure all pages on your site have meta description tags because yeah, they’re still important. The ideal description tag sells the page. It makes me want to read it. A good description tag doesn’t include the site navigation and “about us.”

Run the Moz Link Explorer. Look at the Top Pages report. If a top page returns a 404 or 30x response, put the page back. Don’t redirect it. Don’t shrug. Put. It. Back. Otherwise, you’re treating authority like a dead goldfish and hurting your SEO. Yes, I linked that to our services page. No need to click.

Make sure your site’s SSL certificate works. Otherwise, Google Chrome users who visit your site will see all kinds of dire warnings with a teeny, tiny link at the bottom of the page that lets them see your site. Because Google protects us. Google loves us. Enter the warm embrace of Google. Mmmmmmmmmm.

Put content on your product and service pages. Don’t quarantine it on the blog like it’s a piece of e.coli-laced romaine lettuce. Add one sentence to each page that offers advice, further information, or a bit of entertainment related to whatever’s on the page.

Look at the most frequently asked questions you receive via email, phone, or in person. Make sure you answer them on relevant pages. If you shove them into a 5,000-word FAQ page, you get what you deserve.

Use bullets or numbers for lists. Anything else is too much work for the reader, first because you’re still trying to read this, second because now you’re considering giving up, and third because if you’re still reading this one you have far better mental fortitude than I.

Log into your Google Ads account. Go into your campaign settings. Unless you know what they mean, uncheck “Display Network” and “Search Partners.” The alternative can be embarrassing.

Set up a separate campaign for the Search Network. Only use the Display Network if you know what you’re doing. Or if you’re high. Or if you’re handling someone else’s advertising and they’ve treated you like Montresor.

Run paid ads on Bing. 5–10% of the entire internet-using public is still an awful lot.

If you share something on Facebook, pay to boost/promote it to your followers. Otherwise, they probably won’t see it. By “probably” I mean “definitely.” There are lots of nuances and best practices, but for now, splurge: Spend ten bucks when you post something you want folks to see.

Before you use that stock image, search for it. See who else is using it. The brand you save may be your own.

Intermediate

Did the basics? Time to dig deeper.

Yeah, yeah, you’re brilliant. Unless you ignore the basic stuff. Then you’re a bit of a goober. Read Basic, above, and get to work.

Put Google Tag Manager on your site and take random-ass tracking JavaScripts off. Join us in the 21st century and take control of your tracking as a marketer (from Portent Analytics genius Michael Wiegand).

Learn to use LinkedIn Advertising. This is more of a beginner thing, but there’s a learning curve. Knowing Facebook does not prepare you for using LinkedIn.

Use Facebook for some B2B marketing. Your B2B customers are on there, too.

Use this tool to test content accessibility on your site. You don’t need to score 100%. You do need to take the report seriously and fix the obvious stuff (from front-end dev and H1-level nerd Jeremiah Bratton)

Learn what server-side caching is. Turn it on. Or use a service like Cloudflare. Otherwise: Inbox. Networking requests. Again with the don’t-ask-me-if-it’s-a-ranking-factor-thing. See above.

Use the “capping” system on paid media platforms when bidding on anything from CPM, to clicks, to conversions. It’ll prevent those late-night fiscal apocalypses and help you figure out where you’ve left money on the table. (from Portent’s overall marketing and social media nerd Alex DeLeon)

Go into Google Search Console and read the URLs listed as “Crawled – currently not indexed” in the Coverage report. Identify which pages are important and need to be indexed. Fix them (from Portent technical SEO Evan Hall, who hasn’t written anything on our site yet but will be shortly).

Use googly-moogly in at least one piece of content per quarter. It’s refreshing. Or just write with some personality. Your choice.

Get Screaming Frog’s Log File Analyser and learn to use it. Your log files are the most accurate source of raw site usage data. Assuming your dev team set them up correctly. If they didn’t gently ask them to please kindly bring your web servers into the 21st century.

Objectively assess whether you need to use a client-side javascript framework for content delivery. What’s the reasoning? It’s like fruit compote on perfectly good pancakes. Tell me why I need this. Otherwise, it’s unnecessary adornment. I want an ironclad justification that doesn’t include “I just learned React.”

Prune the house email list. No sense ruining it by getting tagged as spam. I made this “advanced” because there’s a learning curve. Be careful.

If you’re going to throw around words like “artificial intelligence,” learn the difference between narrow and general AI. Unless you think you’ll enjoy the day you end up in a room pitching your marketing services, and some wiseass says “Really? AI?” and takes the entire conversation off the rails.

Learn code coverage. Javascript is expensive. Again please don’t ask me if this is a ranking factor please I beg of you and when you do just to be a smartass I’m going to ban you from commenting until the end of time so there.

For The Win

Change your WordPress password. If you don’t, you might spend two days smacking yourself in the forehead while sifting through your site looking for links built by marketers who are too lazy to do real outreach. I have a good friend who just went through this experience. Someone else. Not me. No way. I’m too smart for that. Cough.

Don’t rely on this list. Build on it. Make your own. Because I don’t know you, I don’t know your brand, and I’m just a ranty marketer in Seattle who wrote this while stressed out about holiday shopping.

Ian Lurie is CEO and founder of Portent and the EVP of Marketing Services at Clearlink. He's been a digital marketer since the days of AOL and Compuserve (25 years, if you're counting). He's recorded training for Lynda.com, writes regularly for the Portent Blog and has been published on AllThingsD, Smashing Magazine, and TechCrunch. Ian speaks at conferences around the world, including SearchLove, MozCon, Seattle Interactive Conference and ad:Tech. He has published several books about business and marketing: One Trick Ponies Get Shot, available on Kindle, The Web Marketing All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies, and Conversation Marketing. Follow him on Twitter at portentint, and on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/ianlurie.

Comments

I know one thing I should not be doing and that is reading yet another list post by a blogger. Just kidding :). But seriously you have pointed out many things that I knew I should be doing but am not. Thanks for the reminder. Now I have to just get back to work.

Thanks Patricia! Although I’d say that there’s more to internet marketing than SEO alone. There’s stuff on this list about analytics, e-mail marketing, usability, etc.. SEO is part of internet marketing, but not all of it.

That was an excellent list with some excellent resources and pointers. In particular the point on monthly press releases. Also pushes me to look further into yahoo answers. On an additional note I found this blog by using a completely new tool for me called Google alert, Simply put in your keywords and Google actually sends you trends that occur on-line with your chosen keyword. Another great pointer to aid in marketing your website.

Great list! Certainly covers all the basics and avoids anything ‘black-hat’. Whatever we call this field: SEO / SEM / Internet Marketing… it all comes down to basics – creating a useful resource for the people that consume what you offer. The only thing I’d add to the list is re-iterative testing during changes and the power of observing actual users of your site. Oh, and to check if your Grandma can use it and what happens when a person with a screen reader accesses your site!

Great additions. The reason I call it ‘internet marketing’ is that it also includes stuff that doesn’t touch search engines, like e-mail. Re-iterative testing is as important as re-iterative design and analysis. And accessibility should be second nature.

You had me at #1. Flash intros make web developers feel cool, and they make everyone else feel impatient. The rise of broadband has turned the mouse into a remote control, and Flash intros give people a great reason to change the channel.

I love number #1, very funny. I’m not quite sure about the Hackersafe suggestion. The the logic, the more the better. There are many products in this area, could any of them work and would combining them create a stronger trustmark? We have some folks on the business side who insist on having more than one subscription to such services because their SEO consultant has advised them to.

Regarding point 12: I have an e-commerce site with a remotely-hosted shopping cart. The transaction pages are, of course, encrypted, and “protected” by [a “protective shield” company]. We’ve been getting mail from [the same “protective shield” company] encouraging us to purchase the right to use their logo on our content pages, where it would do utterly nothing for us or our customers. We also received mail from a “customer” who was irate that our display pages weren’t “protected.” We were unable to convince this person that this made no sense. After some investigation, we found that this “customer” actually had an affiliation with [the “protective shield” company]. Very uncool.

I like this list. #28, in particular, was an eye-opener for me. This serves as a great source to start building relationships with fellow bloggers as well as stay abreast on what’s current in the industry.

I feel like giving you a standing ovation. This is a seriously good list. One of the biggest problems is that although we may “know” to do all of these things, frankly, we let a lot of them fall through the cracks because there really is a lot to remember to do. I’m wishing I could print this list out on a shiny poster to hang on my wall. Since I can’t, I’ll just bookmark the page and come back to it as often as needed. My memory is terrible. Always good to have a little help.

I’m really sick of people saying to delete splash pages or flash intros. People, do whatever you want. if you want an intro, keep it. Most intro pages are for legitimate purposes these days anyway. For example, with a movie site, one that is to pull you into a story, or a game site, or a site with a theme from you can use motion, sound to engage the audience, use flash intros. Last I looked HTML and blog frameworks, didn’t supply a way to do this, so flash is still king for that. Ignore this blog post’s author about deleting them. if they work, keep them, enhance them. If they don’t work for you, then delete them.

Hi ms, Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I don’t mind pages that are 99% flash, or even 100% flash, IF THEY INVITE THE USER to participate or further the goal of the site. A classic ‘splash’ page has stuff looping around with no opportunity for me to do anything. And far too many of those lend absolutely nothing to the site or the marketing goal Movie sites, for example, are great. Movies are about motion, and nothing does motion online better than Flash. I don’t want anyone to think I’m a Flash-hater. I’m not. Thanks, Ian

@webgeek: Nice trolling. But, what you lack in capitalization you make up for with gross assumptions. I’ve been writing code since the early 1990’s. Including some pretty respectable web apps. While I’m not genius, I manage. Now, if only you could punctuate as well as I write code…

Thanks a million. Well written and pertinent. I’m not an Internet marketer myself but my punters want the best. many have asked me why I don’t have ads and other stuff on our site; well its just that our site is information for our clients rather than a direct money spinner. Thanks again. I’ll watch ou for your articles. The Baldchemist

Great list Ian. I concur with you regarding the hackersafe logo boosting conversion rates based on ‘human trust’, but I am curious as to any research you have on the logo improving a websites authority or trust rank?

it’s your site to run as you please but IMHO this is one of the big probs with no follow. PPL get far too concerned about how google sees there site instead of linking the natural way would in the past. If you are linking to something “bad” or that you don’t want indexed use nofollow. If you are linking to something good don’t try to horde, save or conserve your pagerank. If other people see you as not giving the link love they might be more inclined to not link to you in a way that passes page rank. my two drachmas.

I have to agree with #1..those flash introduction that is taking too much of your time really sucks..but I don’t why we still can’t get rid of them…I guess probably because they look nice but we have to admit most of the time they really are annoying…^^ # 23 is funny but true..I just hope my site is not that hideously ugly..^^

Don’t worry. Hideously ugly means the site induces allergic reactions in a measurable percentage of the population. Symptoms include uncontrollable laughter, howls of disgust, an urge to throw your monitor, and a rising need to reach through the monitor and slap the site owner in the face. Your site inspires none of those and in fact looks pretty damned good to me.

Thanks for this list. I am fairly new to internet marketing and most of the articles I read continue to go over my head. This article is packed full of useful information, while still remaining understandable. Thanks!

I’ve been at this new business for just a couple of days here. I knew there was more to it than the-make-money-fast-on-demand-instant-cash URL gangbangers were telling me. I llke them love them want them but lets hold on and get the rest of the picture. All I’m trying to say is thanks so much!

Thanks Ian. I read your ideas and thanks for being so simple. Since I am new to this SEO jungle and since I am trying to improve my site rankings I found your article very useful. I knew about Googe Analytics but you have shown a bunch of other free tools valuable to me. Thanks Guru Naganat[email protected]http://www.dubinresidential.com

This list brought a tear to my eye. Well done, and I now feel wholly inadequate. I can sling Flash, but I am with you on the over-use of it. When used properly, it’s a beautiful thing. However, most uses of Flash are unnecessary. Thanks for your work on this list, and now I’ve got to get to work!

Normally I hate these kind of list posts because the author doesn’t know what they are talking about. This post, however, doesn’t miss on a single point! You have touched on seriously hot tips and anyone that applies this knowledge will be successful. Great work!

Thanks for the great list, I made sure to save this one as a reference. Many things I know already but of course I have not done them all. If you have a few sites, and a job and a family, and a life (sort of), how does one find time to do all these things? I’m still trying to figure that out.

@Delusional As are all of us 🙂 Best thing you can do is ‘delegate to abstraction’, as Warren Buffet once put it. I prioritize, finding the things that’ll have the most impact first, and then working my way down the list.

Amazing Man ! Its really very nice to read all 59 tips. I would like to add one more point that always speak out in social media site whatever new post you write. I personally experience very good response using this method. Thanks again I am stumbling it here http://lindsayhogan.stumbleupon.com/ so that my Stumbleupon group can read your post.

Hey, Ian, Some spamming moron thought it would be cool to copy and paste your entire post over on the Warrior Forum, claiming it as his own. Well, I just wanted to give credit where credit is due and say thanks for the great info. I learned several things from it and wanted to give you the credit for it. I’ve also made others aware of the fact that the OP stole it from here. Thanks!

Hey, Your article was cut/paste (read stolen) by someone on Warrior Forum. Here’s the link to the forum post I just wanted to thank YOU for writing this article…even though I found it via the forum rather than your site. I thumbed it up on Stumbleupon just b/c it was good and I felt you deserved a little juice for posting a great list of things to do 🙂 Cheers, Brad Spencer

Wow! Now that’s a list. I think the problem starts when people get bad advice, and then add another layer of bad advice, and keep building on that. I’m willing to bet very few people have already done ALL 59 things before reading your list. Someone else mentioned the value of adding the ‘name’ field to an opt-in form, and I agree because it allows me to personalize each message. What I like about the list is that it looks not only at the customer experience, but also the marketing aspect as well. Thanks again for a great list. All the best, Michael Oksa

A most comprehensive resource – kudos – two questions/topics: 1) For those lucky enough to capture their brand name on multiple domains (widget.com, widget.us, widget.tv, etc.) which TLD should they go with and why? Should it always be .com? 2) Again with all those domains and a single brand, what are the best practices for utilizing all those domains as separate landing pages around a single brand? How do you make it clear to the search engines that they are all pointing to the one brand/primary site?

@Steven I’d always go with the .com. It’s what folks will type in anyway, even if you show them widget.us. For your second question: It depends heavily on the brand and the situation. If you have multiple campaigns, it might make sense to use the other domains. For example, if you’re doing a lot of video, widget.tv is a great domain.

I just found you on Digg. You’ve been Dugg and will continue to try and spread the word about you. Amazing job! Your feedburner link “Subscribe to my RSS feed for more marketing goodness.” was misread at first as GODness… equally true -Steve

What do you make of all the new developments from Adobe? They are claiming that they have worked in collaboration with Google and that Flash is now indexable by search engines. I don’t know how real this is but it would change your list a little bit.

@Allan It’s much ado about almost nothing. Adobe and Google ARE collaborating, but no improvements they’ve made so far will result in any significant improvement in Flash’s crawlability. And that’s not even considering whether Google can create a semantic structure based on Flash (which it can’t).

Useful and extremely funny. I am constantly talking people out of Flash splash pages. As if the job’s not hard enough… I think I’m going to illustrate the first point in future meetings. “What’s with the bucket of water?” “Allow me to demonstrate how much your customers enjoy your Flash intro…”

I love the comedy in your first rule! It’s great to see that people still have a scene of humor in Internet marketing and I do feel like I’m drowning while watching flash intros! Great post! Bookmarked!

If you allow I’m gonna share the link to your article with some friends, who are looking for the same information. We were discussing about this topic yesterday and I searched for infos about it on google. I’m happy about finding your article.

I’m a beginner when it comes to web design – and there are some really useful tips on this list (some I don’t fully understand due to my technical incapability!..) However, from a surfers point of view may I recommend the following tips too: 1: If you have video on your site as a tutorial or ad etc, switch the autoplay off so we can adjust the volume before we watch it – excessive and unexpected volume can be very annoying.. 2: Rollover ads – it’s the electronic equivalent of the mailman kicking your front door in and shoving your unwanted mail down your throat, and if it contains video/sound, see above! – most sites I come across with this problem, I never visit again. 3: I totally agree with holly with the alt tags – just don’t make em too long! 4: If there is any flash media on your site (games/tutorials/etc), stick a preloader on it so we know what the hell’s going on, and a skip button, just in case… 5: Flashing text and Marquee’s – If you use them, I’d suggest you put your head in that bucket of water, only for longer than 10 seconds.

hey Ian, this is an amazing list,You covered almost all aspects of Internet marketing that every Online business-man should know, I also say that with Web2.0 (something that you don’t cover), communication and “build relationship” become an easy task. this is very important, coz today, with a “tone of scam” in internet, people now pay more attention, so no one will “buy” any stuff till he knows (this is why relationship is imporant) who is the owner of the stuff. thanks again Ian, this is very informative Anouar

Wow, a very well done list! And thanks so much for including all of the useful resource links. I’ll use this as a reference for both my clients and my own websites. (You know what they say about the mechanic who drives a run-down beater…)

I think sometimes it’s irritating for websites to have links that opened up in a different tab. Unless you think that the user is going to find the former page useful. If not, I think transferring under the same page will retain the user within the site longer.

What a fantastic list, one I will keep. Number one is great and totally true, plus flash is something that does not help search engine optimization. It is like hitting a brick wall with search engine spiders. Love your blog, will be back. Mike

Hi There, thanks for the helpful list of tips you have shared with us all. I find intros and splash pages annoying too and for any user who has slow connection, the option to skip is essential, otherwise they may get bored and go back to the SE. I will bookmark this page for future 😉

I have to laugh that you tell people to hire someone to write their press release but not their landing page…the one page that has the most potential to bring them money! Overall a great list though. Tracy

This suggestion can be applied to EVERY SINGLE website that is focused on making money. However, most entrepreneurs are so focused on beautifool design, they forget that the design only has to be beautiful enough to convert. Not more, not less. You don’t need a long loading flash as your navigation bar. You don’t need some stupid sound running in background on your website. And YOU MUST make them feel comfortable with your website. Thanks for the list. Some people forget how important this thing is.

Nice post! Great foresight on loading speed since Google mentioned they want to make the internet faster. Did I miss addressing canonical issues? 301 redirects, etc. If that’s not on there it should be.

I am sure those who are honest about the linking will care how there site is seen on google vs. just sending out bogus links to nofollow sites and all without any care. that will just destroy a site but not many actually know that. Great list. Thanks for sharing.

Great post with way too much info for one sitting (which is a good thing). I printed out the list and will read the second half when I get home. As for the first half, I really liked the progression of points #14 and #15. When you’re just starting out, it makes sense to track where previous successes have been.

“If you have a Flash introduction on your web site, delete it.” Absolutely true. No one comes to a website like ebay to watch some fancy graphs. There are already many websites for this. Customers and visitors look for simplicity and the useful information. The list is great. No wonder why this one is so popular. Thanks.

An extremely useful post Ian. I think every person who is remotely involved in internet marketing should read this… Oh and btw, i can never stress #22 enough. Getting a w3c compliant website is the least you can do tbh

As for page speed, here is the catch. Some PageSpeed flags are difficult to clear. Catch #1: The CMS(s), such as Drupal, write many individual CSS files, and perhaps JS files; that number depending on the add-on modules installed. While they _sometimes_ can be optimized (if CMS setting is available to do so), you might be stuck with all those individual files. You cannot consolidate those individual module CSS/JS files, or you screw yourself for updates. If you minify your CSS/JS, you might sacrific annotations and clarity of code — at least to some degree. Catch #2: Google Analytics and other 3rd party apps code often triggers flag with PageSpeed. Best you can do is maybe 80% score, which is respectable for a CMS site, I’d say. In summary, not much to do about those things. So, don’t fire your web developer unless you know for sure that they don’t know what they are doing.

I think if everyone started of with a bit of knowledge or could find some decent real online info like the list provided here you could make a good start online. The list is great and I am sure not all of us have implemented the whole list. I think number 2 has come more into the equation this year as well with Google appartently taking this into account when ranking websites. Thank you for the list, very informative. RP

Thanks alot for these perfect tips that you gathered them. another tips that I recommend to you is : choosing some advertisement that are related to your field and be sure that they have a real background.In this way when somebody search a topic that related to these ads,he/she will connect to your site.

This list brought a tear to my eye. Well done, and I now feel wholly inadequate. I can sling Flash, but I am with you on the over-use of it. When used properly, it’s a beautiful thing. However, most uses of Flash are unnecessary. Thanks for your work on this list, and now I’ve got to get to work!

Whew! That’s a pretty long list Ian. I almost gave up when reached number 31 🙂 I am absolutely agree with you regarding flash intros on websites… doesn’t do any good to a website if one wants to get results. You sound pretty mean, but I guess one has to take their online business and website very seriously if they plan to succeed. Now, I’m going to go do the items that I haven’t done yet 🙂

Wow. I thought I was doing OK but creating and managing my own site but after going through this list I now realize that I either need a webmaster or more than 24 hours in the day. Thanks for the eyeopener.

You are hysterical. I love that somebody on the net actually has some personality! What great info, I’m really looking forward to implementing your plan of attack. (Also going to check out your book!) Thanks again for the great info and the giggles! Hope you have a great day!

So glad I found your site using SU. Yes, a Flash intro is a prime indicator of Cluelessness. (Big C.) Reminds me of a year ago when I was out driving and saw a gorgeous new oondo building. Punched the URL into iPhone. Got a “you don’t have Flash” error. Yes, that’s right, someone constructed a $20 million building and let his web guy decide that anyone with an iPhone shouldn’t be allowed to find out more about it. They still haven’t sold any of the condos, though that may have more do to with the fact that on one side the view is of a gas station and the other is of a blank wall 3 feet away. Charleen Larson

Bam! There goes my afternoon. And evening, too, probably. I knew this would be a dangerous article to start reading, but thanks anyway – it’s like a roundup of all the “i really must get around to”‘s that have been meandering around my brain, plus some extra stuff I’d never considered. And you made me laugh too, which helps.

LOL Really funny post with really useful tips. Love the mood. Will check your ebook soon. Regarding Youtube, I’ll suggest to include a microphone in the “set”. 85% of the quality of a video is a good audio.